Afternoon business highlights – November 14, 2017

Kenya’s government is set to unveil a National Export Development and Promotion Strategy with the aim of growing the country’s exports to the rest of the world by 20 per cent per annum by 2022. State Department for Trade Principal Secretary Chris Kiptoo says the strategy will focus on six items that include Tea, Coffee, horticulture, tobacco, textile and apparels. Additionally, the country could also focus on value addition on its produce to widen its exports offering. Such include frozen vegetables which have a huge market in Europe and meat produce, the appetite for which is high in Saudi Arabia and Egypt among other places.

Energy Bill seeks to crack down on illegal power connections with threat of Ksh1 million fine

A new Bill seeks to impose a fine of Ksh1 million on homes and businesses making illegal power connections and disconnections. If the Bill is passed, proposed changes to the law will be included in the Energy Bill 2017, which was tabled in Parliament last week. The proposed Bill also calls fort a jail term of at least a year for those contravening the law.

National Land Commission faults Lands Ministry for failing to speed up property reforms

The Ministry of Lands i s to blame for a delay in enacting a law capping the size of acreage, the National Land Commission (NLC) has said. This comes as the Commission is preparing to launch investigations into cases of historical injustices. To ensure land is available for reparation to victims of historical justices, capping the private land sizes top the list of remedies cited under the national land policy. There is currently no legal framework for implementing private land size caps even as the NLC prepares to launch historical injustices programme in Murang’a from the first week of December.

Kenya signs bilateral agreement with Ireland Ireland and Kenya have signed bilateral agreements and grants aimed at boosting the agricultural sector. Ireland’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney, who also visited